When you sit down to write a birth plan, regardless of whether or not you have done so before, all you can do is hope for the best. Of course you add in 'epidural if I feel I need it' or 'complete silence and being left entirely alone by absolutely everyone if I feel I need it', but you also write aspirational things like 'empowering music', 'a dark and peaceful space', and 'aromatherapy massage'. Needless to say, there is a reason why some midwives are advocating for referring to these as birth 'preferences' and not birth 'plans' - as anyone who studied Robert Burns, or even Steinbeck at GCSE , will know, the best laid plans gang aft agley , and this seem as (if not more) true for birth as it is for everything else. One of the things I most definitely did not write in my birth plan for Seb was 'three different catheters please' or 'such a painful urethra I need an epidural more for that than for the contra
Liberté, Egalité, Maternité